have we done to refute the calumny? How have we served our species?
Have we 'scorned delight and loved laborious days'? Have we made the
utmost of the 'talent' confided to our care? Have we done those
good deeds to our race upon which we can retire,--an 'Estate of
Beneficence,'--from the malice of the world, and feel that our deeds
are our defenders? This is the consolation of virtuous actions; is it so
of--even a virtuous--indolence?"

"You speak as a preacher," said Vane,--"I merely as a calculator; you of
virtue in affliction, I of a life in ease."

"Well, then, if the consciousness of perpetual endeavour to advance our
race be not alone happier than the life of ease, let us see what this
vaunted ease really is. Tell me, is it not another name for _ennui_?
This state of quiescence, this objectless, dreamless torpor, this
transition _du lit a la table, de la table au lit_,--what more dreary
and monotonous existence can you devise? Is it pleasure in this
inglorious existence to think that you are serving pleasure? Is it
freedom to be the slave to self? For I hold," continued Trevylyan,
"that this jargon of 'consulting happiness,' this cant of living for
ourselves, is but a mean as well as a false philosophy. Why this eternal
reference to self? Is self alone to be consulted? Is even our happiness,
did it truly consist in repose, really the great end of life? I doubt if
we cannot ascend higher. I doubt if we cannot say with a great moralist,
'If virtue be not estimable in itself, we can see nothing estimable in
following it for the sake of a bargain.' But, in fact, repose is the
poorest of all delusions; the very act of recurring to self brings about
us all those ills of self from which, in the turmoil of the world, we
can escape. We become hypochondriacs. Our very health grows an object
of painful possession. We are so desirous to be well (for what is
retirement without health?) that we are ever fancying ourselves ill;
and, like the man in the 'Spectator,' we weigh ourselves daily, and live
but by grains and scruples. Retirement is happy only for the poet, for
to him it is _not_ retirement. He secedes from one world but to gain
another, and he finds not _ennui_ in seclusion: why? Not because
seclusion hath _repose_, but because it hath _occupation_. In one word,
then, I say of action and of indolence, grant the same ills to both, and
to action there is the readier escape or the nobler consolation."

Vane shrugged his